The brown bear cam at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park, AK is up and running. Lots of fish trying to go upstream, but I haven’t seen any bears yet.
We took a vacation trip to Katmai and saw tons of grizzlies, some of which were right in the camp. Didn’t go near the falls, but they were chowing down at the lake.
Is it really live? Cos I just clicked on it and, hey, there’s a bear. Am I lucky, are there bears there all the time, or is the 4 minutes of bear footage they have on a continuous loop?
If live, very cool.
j
ETA - a bear eating a fish, even!
It’s live. When it’s spawning season, there are bears there. Sometimes quite a few. They are not social animals and fights break out quite often.
The bears are there, though not yet in the numbers we saw last year. They’ll be coming I’m sure. The most we’ve seen thus far is 4 at the same time. No sign of “Otis,” the old bear who was everyone’s favorite. A few of the cubs seem to have come back, and they love playing in the water as they catch their fish. We got hooked on watching the bears last year. We could leave it on for hours. In some unexplainable way, watching those bears lounging in the river, catching their dinner, is very relaxing.
There were five on this morning’s feed. Looked like a couple of yearlings in the mix.
Wow, that is really cool - even when the bears aren’t there it’s fun to watch the fish. Beautiful place, too.
I’ve noticed that when the bears are absent, the salmon take advantage of this to swarm up the falls. That’s going on right now.
Yesterday, when there were a few bears there, I didn’t see one salmon taking the jump.
If you move the slide back to earlier time, you can see some really great close-up video of the bears. I saw two big ones having a tussle.
I just clicked. Bear with his back turned to the camera, looks to be chowing on the far bank. Three white birds flitting about.
thank you, chefguy. today i got to see one of the bears at the top of the falls catch a fish like a ball player snagging a fly ball.
the water seems to be running faster today with fewer salmon flying up the falls.
it is very addictive.
I’m reviving this thread because the Katmai bear cams are back up, and now in higher resolution:
Get away! I just clicked on it again and there are bears everywhere! (Again.)
Also I just realized (maybe the set up is different or maybe it’s because of the better resolution) that the riffles cam is (some of the time) looking upstream, and in the distance you can see Brooks Falls, the focus of another of the cams.
j
One very chill bear and a Gull(I think) right now.
It’s quite hypnotic!
I told my dog he’s lucky he doesn’t have to sit in freezing water waiting for his dinner to show up…and it could escape from him even then. Instead of lounging on the couch with his blankie and toys waiting for the refrigerator door to open.
The new cameras are amazing. Alaska is one of the truly most beautiful places on earth.
Nice thing on this website is that you can take screenshots using the camera icon at the top of the video.
There are a couple yearlings hanging with mom at the riffles, bored out of their minds. “Come ON Mom, I want to go home.”
there was some excitement last week when grazer knocked an unwitting bear off the cliff. she is a very serious mama bear.
the bear falls at 2:00. it is about a 15 ish foot fall. 83 took a long nap on the island after the fall.
Is that a bear or a …dog?
Fat Bear Week reaches its culmination in tomorrow’s final vote to determine the champion fattie at Brooks Falls!
Looks like Otis will be facing off against Walker for the honor of being fattest bear (Otis appears to have an insurmountable lead over bear #812 in one semifinal, but that voting is still ongoing).
No matter who wins, those are some outstanding salmon-filled bellies.